3rd Year:
DIOR
I am Dior, 3rd year GIGA student and am pure Uzbek guy. Ability to hold communication in 5 languages, such as English, Uzbek, Russian, Turkish and a bit Japanese. And i hope that my analytical & leadership skills to take consideration many issues and negotiation skills in order to analysis for environmental and IT issues will be useful for team projects at SFC. I used to train with Kickboxing during the 4 years and my interests are watching football especially Real Madrid and eating chocolates… I am working on the two projects, which is included two factors, Internal and External. This SFC Culture is Internal project in the Campus and i am also working on the External factor which is called IT industry in Japan, (Future Internet of Japan) and Innovative devices expo between two counties JP and UZB. My project for this semester is that, SFC Culture, what is purpose of this project group is that, to share and exchange idea and knowledge and culture among the local Japanese and foreign students.
http://www.sfcculture.weebly.com
HIROSHI SASAKI
Hi my name is Hiroshi. I’m a 4th year student in faculty of environment and information. I was born in Tokyo and brought up in Yokohama. I lived in U.S.A. when I was in elementary school for three years. It was really great experience. My hobby is playing electric guitar and visiting abroad. I been playing electric guitar since I was 14. The reason why I joined Mr.Freedman’s lab is because when I was in his Project English class, I get to know about Hiyoshi Tunnel Project that Ayaka san was doing. Now I am studying about International Cooperation in Southeast ASIA. My project is about beach conservation in Bali and Eno shima Japan. Also I am researching about environment problem in Bali.
Chang Jin Jeon
Hello. My name is Chang Jin Jeon. I am 4th year GIGA student at Keio SFC and enrolled in faculty of environment and information studies. I was born in Korea and spent most of my time at there so studying at Keio SFC is kind of my first time living abroad for a long time. My hobby is singing and travelling around Japan and taking pictures. I registered and currently in Prof.Freedman’s Kenkyukai and doing research about Bitcoin system. By utilizing the Kenkyukai, hope to understand 1. how to do research 2. What should be done in order to Bitcoin become more mature and stabilized asset.
YUSUKE AOKI
I am Yusuke Aoki from Ise in Mie prefecture. The favorite words is “I will go on doing what I like till I hate it”. I always move to the direction that I like. Currently, I am planning three projects.”Go around the world as backpacker”, “SFC COACHING” and “Wine testing”.
These are the things that I like to do. If you are interested in my projects, please contact me! Please feel free to talk to me!
AKIRA HASHIMOTO
Hello, my name is Akira. I have been living in Japan for almost all my life except for 11 months for which I was studying film in Los Angeles, California in 2015. Thanks to the study abroad experience, now I have skillsets (hopefully enough) to make a motion picture. From this lab, I would like to represent Japan to those being interested in the country through visual media. Nice to meet you all.
KANA SAITO
Hi, my name is Kana Saito. I am a third year in the Environment and Information faculty. I lived to the United States from when I was 4 to 10 years old. Afterwards, I came back to Japan and entered SFC junior/senior high school, so it is my 9th year in SFC. I belong to the Keio Windsurfing team, so obviously I love going to the ocean and am tan all year. I’ve just entered this kenkyukai this year, so I don’t have my theme yet, but I am very excited to be part of this class.
4th Year:
SAYURI ELEANOR SHINOHARA
Hi I’m Sayuri! I moved to London when I was 3 months old,then to Hong Kong at 10, and came to Japan at 16.I’m actually taking a semester off from this September in order to return to London to study music.As for my graduation project, I’ve been working with Sagang and Selina on creating a documentary film about Third Culture Kids in Japan.The project originally started out by us casually talking about our backgrounds and then we found out that all three of us were carrying the “Third Culture Kids:Growing Up Among Worlds” book in our school backpacks! We now call the book “Our Bible” by the way!haha. We plan to create a film focusing on Japanese TCKs’ of different generations and show the psychological and educational effects towards the lives of TCKs.
SAGANG
Born in Japan, raised in the states. Currently researching on Third Culture Kids (TCKs) in Japan, where they are not being nurtured and supported within Japan, because of this Japan is missing out an opportunity to globalize.
SAKI KITAI
I’m interested in tourism and international relations. I was born and raised in Japan but spent 3 years in Canada between the age of 15-18. My passion is traveling and acquiring new language skills that will lead me to communicate with people from all over the world. Currently I work at Odawara station where thousands of people in/outside of Japan use to go to many places including one of the best famous tourist place in Japan “Hakone”. I would love to make my everyday experience from work into my research project in the future. The project that I took part in last semester was the Guidebook for tourists visiting Japan lead by Mana Yamamoto. We visited variety of Japanese Izakaya and researched Izakaya foods, drinks, how Japanese foods are served, etc. Since my future project very much includes the question of how we could promote/present Japanese culture to the world in order to attract many more people to come to Japan, taking part in this project gave me a little insight into the needs of tourists from abroad.
Towards my graduation project, I will be researching further into the Japanese tourism culture on how we could make an appeal as a tourism nation.
IBUKI TAKIZAWA
This semester, I will continue on my project from last semester to improve GIGA students’ school life. I have been noticing that there are some important information that most Japanese students know, but GIGA students do not. I will look up information about housing, recruitment, and various contracts in Japan.
SELINA WELSH
I am half Japanese and half Scottish. I was born in London, England and lived there till I was 8, moved to Singapore for 4 years, and then to the States where I spent 3 years in Chicago and 3 years in New York State. I love spending my free time watching movies at home, and listening to Indie music for most of the time. This semester, I have been working on Third Culture Kids (TCK) along with Sagang and Sayuri-Eleanor. Third Culture Kids is the term used to define kids who have been born or raised outside of their parents passport country. As a TCK myself, I personally wanted to research specifically on the psychological aspects of these children, while focusing on the advantages and problems that these international children go through, in order to understand this rare development that has started to become a lot more common as our world has become very global. We will be planning to create a documentary that will focus on other TCKs that we have met, living in Japan.
HIROAKI OKUNO
I’m Hiro, 4th year GIGA student. I was born in Japan but moved to Dallas, Texas when I was 5, lived there for 7 years and moved to Cupertino, California where I spent my last year in Middle school and all of my High school years before coming back to Japan for University. I love spend my free time to play video games, sports, read manga, go driving, or plainly watch movies at home. I am currently interested in teaching the English language to the young and old. This semester, I am doing research in how the sports population are affected by the publications of sports manga and anime. As I love to play sports and loved to mimic all the cool moves done in manga and anime, I would like to see how these media culture influences and affects the real life population. For future graduation project, I would like to incorporate the findings and research on the best way to influence and teach a second language (including pronunciations) to a native level.
OBOG:
MASAKI HONJO
I’m Senior in Faculty of policy management. I’m studying languages and sports business and also I’m working as Rick-Shaw driver in Asakusa now and I’m introducing Japanese culture to tourists. I joined this Kenkyukai because I realized I didn’t know about Japanese culture despite I’m Japanese. Now I’m working on Rick-shaw business as my Graduation project.
MISATO KUBOTA
Hi I am Misato and I’m in department of Policy Management in SFC. I was born in Tokyo and grew up in Shizuoka. I went to a school that has English Immersion program from K2 to 9th grade. I like to play irish tunes with my flute and tin whistle which I’ve been playing for 10 years. I live close to university and I live alone. I walk to school almost everyday and I also like to workout after class. I work at a restaurant at school and I really enjoy it since we have few foreign students so we always have new fun things to share together. I have my homestay family in Utah and my host mom works at a organic raw high quality snack company for athletes. She always shared me the best food and best things in Utah, so that’s the place where I get most of the inspiration. Summed up all of these, I will be doing a graduation research on Teaching Second Language to see if using interesting topic in class to acquire language are effective.
RYUTARO KATSUTA
Hi everyone, my name is Ryutaro Katsuta, but everyone calls me Richard. I’m a senior at Keio University, studying at the Environment and Information Faculty. I’m interested in marketing and business operations. I’m half Thai and half Japanese. Born in Thailand, I was raised in different places from all over the world like Hong Kong, California, New York, and Japan. Some of my favorite hobbies are exercising, drawing, rugby, drinking with friends, and sleeping. My research topic will be about “The Potential Entrepreneurship in Contemporary Japanese Business Cultures”.
MASATO SUZUKI
Hi all, I’m Masato, I’m in charge of filming in Freedman seminar. When I entered in his class, I was sophomore. I’ve studied abroad in Nashville(TN) for 1 year when I was junior and my major was American history. Then, I came back to SFC last year. I started my new projects, “Filming Hiroshima” and the education of atomic bomb history since this semester. This year is 70th anniversary for end of WW2. “Filming Hiroshima” is the project with Rikkyo university and we are supposed to go to Hiroshima in August 6th. The education of atomic bomb is my personal project for graduate university.
SHUNTA SUDO
Hi all, I’m Shunta and this is my 4th year at SFC. I have lived 7 years abroad (mostly in Vancouver), and got into SFC high school when I returned to Japan at the age of 15. I decided to study at the same campus in University as well. I belong to NaDaRe SNOWBOARDS and 元ロック研究会. I am currently in the phase of graduation project 1, and I have recently finished presenting to the class about my research theme: “Exploring the world of Showa-Kayoukyoku”. As the title shows, I have strong interest to this particular style of Japanese traditional music, and I am planning to build a website next semester which introduces to the foreigners what Showa-kayoukyoku is and how it developed with the culture in Japan.
TAKAYUKI KATO
Hi guys, I’m Takayuki Kato, but everyone calls me Taka. I’m a senior at Keio University, studying at the Environment and Information Faculty. I plan to graduation project about the educational system of English in Japan. I was afraid to attend Freedman Kenkyuukai for the first time because everyone speaks English well and I have been abroad just for 6 months in San Diego, which means my English has no nativity at all. But as time goes by, I’ve been getting to be able to take communication in English because of the kindness of members in Kenkyuukai.
NAMI SATO
Hello. This is Nami Sato. I belong to the Environment and Information faculty at SFC and graduating on 2016 spring. I have lived abroad for a year, attending business program at Seattle. Joining this kenkyuukai has been one of the great experiences here at SFC as we are able to get feed backs from students with unique backgrounds. My graduation theme is engineering role in Japan and I have conducted multiple interviews with engineers working at foreign industry especially located in Seattle area. As part of graduation project, we hosted a research event focusing compulsory computer science education in Japan.
TA:
RAE SUTER
Hello. My name is Rae Suter and I’m a Ph.D. student here at Keio, SFC. I graduated with my bachelor degree in Scientific and Technical Communications from Michigan Tech University. I then moved to Japan to become an English teacher at a high school and junior high school. After three years, I decided to pursue higher education and got my master’s degree and continued on to the Ph.D. Currently, my research involves the effects of perceptions and misconceptions of countries and cultures when products are marketed globally.
Freedman lab. 